William Butler Yeats

"You know what the Englishman's idea of compromise is? He says, Some people say there is a God. Some people say there is no God. The truth probably lies somewhere between these two statements."

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste."

"Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking."

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."

"How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart."

"I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death."

"I have known more men destroyed by the desire to have wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots."

"I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind."

"In dreams begins responsibility."

"Life is a long preparation for something that never happens."

"Man can embody truth but he cannot know it."

"One should not lose one's temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end."

"People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind."

"Take, if you must, this little bag of dreams, Unloose the cord, and they will wrap you round."

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

"The light of lights looks always on the motive, not the deed, the shadow of shadows on the deed alone."

"The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart."

"The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober."

"Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love."

"To be born woman is to know - although they do not speak of it at school - women must labor to be beautiful."

"Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

"Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself."

"Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye; That's all we shall know for truth Before we grow old and die."

"You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends' portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland's history in their lineaments trace; think where man's glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends."